


The First

by Peach_Bitters (peachybitters)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Jedi, Light Angst, Made Up Jedi Traditions, Master & Padawan Relationship(s), Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:35:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25164775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peachybitters/pseuds/Peach_Bitters
Summary: Who was Qui-Gon's first apprentice?
Relationships: Feemor & Qui-Gon Jinn
Comments: 4
Kudos: 39





	The First

**Author's Note:**

> I was inspired to write this after reading that Qui-Gon referred to Xanatos as his first padawan despite having successfully trained one before him. I think this was just someone's attempt to retcon conflicting EU material, but I ran with it because it seemed like a good opportunity to squeeze out a little angst. :)

Feemor waits on the landing platform, searching the skies for his master’s ship. He is little, too little perhaps to be a padawan. He cannot go with his master offworld often. He waits in the safety of the Temple with his books and his lessons.

Qui-Gon sees him and gives him a tired smile. “Done with your classwork for the day already, little one?”

Feemor is not done, but he does not say so. He does not say anything. He smiles shyly. He has not seen his master in a month.

He tries to think hard often about what the other masters say. _Do not let yourself get attached to anyone, not even your master, because you will lose him. Tomorrow or in fifty years. And when you lose him you must go on._

Over the years, Qui-Gon does not make this lesson too hard for him to follow.

Feemor knows, even then, that he is nothing special. He is what they call in the Temple a durable padawan - he has no skills that outshine anyone else’s. His connection to the Force is middling for a Jedi. But he has been gifted with an ideal Jedi temperament to make up for it. He does his classwork and obeys his masters. When he falls he gets back up. He does not complain. He does not cry.

**

Feemor is eleven and meets Qui-Gon’s old master, Dooku, for the first time. Dooku looks down at him archly, sharp eyes assessing him.

“I am interested, Qui-Gon, in what made you choose this one. There are so many outstanding pupils in the Temple these days.”

Qui-Gon smiles kindly down at his apprentice. “Feemor is a very capable padawan. He can hold his own.”

He leaves with Dooku that night and he does not return for two weeks.

***

Feemor grows. He builds his first lightsaber, and the blade is green like Qui-Gon’s. His master is teaching him of the Living Force, and Feemor feels awake to it. He lives in the moment. They travel together, rarely speaking of personal matters, and in later years when at the Temple they rarely speak at all. Yet when they meditate together, it feels as though in the Force he cannot feel himself apart from his master.

When the meditation ends, Feemor wonders if Qui-Gon feels this as well, but does not ask.

***

Feemor is knighted, and he does not return to the Temple for a long time. When he does, he finds Qui-Gon has taken a new apprentice. The boy’s black hair, long bones and haughty manner make Feemor think he must be a relation of Dooku; such blood relations are not altogether rare among the Jedi. This is not the case, yet somehow the notion lingers with him.

Xanatos smiles unpleasantly at him. “Master, didn’t you say Feemor comes from farmers? He does look it, doesn’t he?”

Feemor is taken aback. He knows that he possesses looks humans on many worlds find “common,” yet such things hardly concern the Jedi. He wonders where Xanatos has picked up these notions.

Qui-Gon sighs and shakes his head, but his voice is gentle. “Padawan.”

Feemor does not see them together again, but he hears from others that they are inseparable.

***

When Xanatos turns, Feemor is the only one Qui-Gon lets into his chambers. He does not sleep and he barely touches food. Feemor brings him tea and hard Corellian biscuits. Neither speak much. What can be said?

***

Feemor sits at a spacer’s bar at a mining colony at the edge of Republic territory. He has been alone for several months. These long, lonely missions are the lot of a knight without an apprentice.

He is not alone, though. By happenstance he meets another Jedi in the same bar on the same night. They talk for hours before he takes her back to his room and they sleep together, each savoring in the other a taste of something familiar - something like home.

When he wakes she is gone and he is not surprised.

***

Feemor returns to the Temple and meets a girl, not yet apprenticed. She begs him to take her on. She will be sent away, she says; she is getting too old. Her pain hits him like a wave, and in it he sees flashes of her by his side, older and changed. He knows that he cannot deny her.

She does not have the ideal Jedi temperament. She complains and she cries. Feemor loves her as much as he dares.

***

Qui-Gon has taken another apprentice, a serious boy with sharp eyes. He leans over the boy, something protective in his bearing. Fatherly. 

“I thought Qui-Gon would never take another padawan,” Feemor hears one Jedi tell another. “After what happened to his first.”

“His first?” Feemor asks.

“Yes. He said his first padawan fell to the dark some years ago.”

Feemor contemplates this, mulls it over for longer than he should. Even for Qui-Gon, this is mysterious. He summons his courage and later corners Qui-Gon in a wide, polished hallway near the gardens.

“Was I not your apprentice?”

Does Qui-Gon even understand his meaning? Something tells him he does, a gentle and fleeting wave of sadness in the Force.

“You were, though I was not much of a master.”

Feemor studies his master’s face. It is not the face he sees when he remembers Qui-Gon, when he thinks back on his apprenticeship. It is so much older, full of cares. How young he’d been when he’d taken Feemor on. Feemor has a sudden urge to embrace him, but settles for a slight shake of his head. “I never thought like that. You were my master.”

Qui-Gon smiles. “If only I had a fraction of your humility.”

They part ways; this is the last time Feemor sees him, and it will be how he remembers him.

***

Feemor approaches Qui-Gon’s last apprentice at the bottom of the central spire of the Temple. 

“Tell me, how did he die? I cannot get a straight answer. There are rumors..”

Obi-Wan looks affronted by the directness, and to a degree exhausted. “How did you know him?

“You don’t remember me? He was my master, once.”

Obi-Wan’s face softens with the recognition. He recounts to Feemor how Qui-Gon fell, his eyes downcast. Feemor exhales slowly. It is worse than he thought.

Obi-Wan unclips one of the two lightsabers from his belt and hands it to Feemor.

“This should really be yours. You were his first. You have rights to it.”

Feemor’s throat tightens as he takes Qui-Gon’s lightsaber. Without hesitation he ignites the green blade. A warmth, a light, shoots up his arm and into his chest. He savors it for a moment and then turns off the weapon. He extends the hilt to Obi-Wan.

“It should be yours. You were probably closer to him than I was. And you were with him at the end.”

Obi-Wan shakes his head, refusing to take it. “It doesn’t matter. It’s tradition.” He looks toward the window, out across the city. “Besides, I need to let go. He would want me to.”

“Thank you, my friend. And forgive me for my rudeness. Congratulations on your knighting.” Feemor clips the ‘saber to his belt and bows his head.

Obi-Wan returns his bow, but he is already lost in thought.

***

Tradition dictates that a former apprentice should carry his fallen master’s lightsaber for a year and then surrender it to the Archives, alongside the weapons of countless generations that have gone before. Feemor breaks with this tradition. The weapon remains at his side, and he finds himself reaching for it more often than his own. Somehow, it is more familiar than the one he’s built for himself. It knows him better.

He holds it at the end, as his troops betray him and overwhelm him, as they fire at him from all sides, and he is not afraid.


End file.
